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DEC accused of weed “hypocrisy”

A South West WA farmer claims that the DEC's failure to manage declared weeds has cost him and others thousands of dollars.

David Hudspeth: ABC News

A farmer in Western Australia's South West region has accused the Department for Environment and Conservation (DEC) of acting with hypocrisy in its approach to management of declared pest and weed species.

Orchardist and beef farmer Mark Scott said the DEC was too severely under-resourced to properly control declared weed species, and that farmers are incurring significant costs as a result of the department’s failure to manage vacant government land.

His comments come following the release of a survey by the Auditor General into how effectively both DEC and DAFWA manage animals and plants declared as pests.

“Hopefully [the survey] will show some hypocrisy in the system at the moment,” said Mr Scott. “The DEC has funding for prosecuting people for environmental damage out in the community, but when it comes to them actually abiding by legislation that’s currently with their control of weeds, they aren’t actually providing enough of a budget for them to carry out the legislative requirements.”

Mr Scott’s property, situated in the Blackwood Valley north of Nannup, is bordered by vacant DEC land. He says that the lack of management of weed species on the DEC property has led to his own farm becoming severely impacted.

“Because a lot of these declared weeds are aerial seeders, we’re having plants like Cotton Bush, that we’ve never had on the property before, come up, and it’s now costing us thousands of dollars a year to monitor and then eradicate the weeds,” said Mr Scott.

“The people on the ground are trying very hard to [manage the weeds], but the lack of funding that they get is hampering their efforts in controlling these declared weed species.”

Mr Scott said he supported the initiative of the recently issued Auditor General survey and urged others to take part, however he was critical of what he perceived to be a lack of promotion and the two-week period for completion.

In response to Mr Scott’s claims, the DEC provided the following statement.

“The Department of Environment and Conservation is confident it is adequately resourced to meet the prioritised needs of its pest and weed control responsibilities and looks forward to the findings of the Auditor General’s performance audit.”